[Mono-list] Strange behavior with P/Invoke and return values

[Patrick Hartling]

Paolo Molaro wrote:
> On 08/25/03 Patrick Hartling wrote:
> 
>>I am experimenting with mapping C++ to C# via P/Invoke and Mono 0.26 on 
>>Red Hat 8.0, and I have run into something odd when a native function 
>>returns a C++ object by value.  From the way it is behaving, it appears 
>>that something is going wrong in the allocation of memory on the stack 
>>for the return value.
>>
>>I have attached some code that demonstrates the problem.  My intent is to 
>>use a custom marshaler to make a copy of the return value object in a 
>>freshly allocated C# object reference.  (The validity of this technique 
>>is what I am evaluating, so it's possible I am going down the wrong road 
>>with this.)
> 
> [...]
> 
>>   [DllImport("return_copy")]
>>   [return : MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.CustomMarshaler,
>>                       MarshalTypeRef = typeof(ReferenceDataMarshaler))]
>>   private static extern ReferenceData Marshal_getReferenceCopy(IntPtr instPtr);
> 
> 
> Does your code work under the MS runtime?

As you point out below, there was a mismatch in the code, but with a 
modification, it did work with the MS runtime.  It doesn't fix the 
problems with Mono, unfortunately.

> I'm not sure it's supposed to work.
> ReferenceData in C# is a class, so by default the marshal code in mono
> (check metadata/marshal.c) assumes the unmanaged function returns a
> pointer. The C++ code, though returns the data by value, so you have a
> mismatch. You may try to define a C# struct that matches ReferenceData
> and use that as the type returned from Marshal_getReferenceCopy().
> In a wrapper you create a ReferenceData obj and copy the fields from the
> struct.

That sounds like a good idea.  Thanks for the tip.

  -Patrick


-- 
Patrick L. Hartling                     | Research Assistant, VRAC
patrick@vrac.iastate.edu                | 2624 Howe Hall: 1.515.294.4916
http://www.137.org/patrick/             | http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/